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PNS Daily Newscast - May 24, 2019

President Trump's reported to be ready to sign disaster relief bill without money for border security. Also on the Friday rundown: House bills would give millions a path to citizenship; and remembering California’s second-deadliest disaster.

"Even having a 13 percent uninsured rate among this population is pretty significant when our overall uninsured rate hovers around 4 or 5 percent," she states.

The report says states that have expanded Medicaid have seen their rural uninsured rates drop more than three times as much as states that didn't opt to expand.

Report co-author Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, says the benefits go beyond people's ability to get and afford health care. She says they reach far into the economies of small towns and sparsely-populated counties, as well.

"There's so much research about this,” she states. “So, from an economic perspective, having health insurance, having this Medicaid coverage, is really important in these rural areas, which are already struggling with higher rates of unemployment and poverty."

Hogenson adds the economic effects were already being felt in Minnesota in the years before the Medicaid expansion.

"There have been rural hospitals and clinics across the state that have closed, maternity wards or other critical care services – part of that is just because of not having access to patients who can come and get services because they're insured," she states.

Hogenson says today Minnesota can contrast its progress with states such as South Dakota, which elected not to expand, and where the uninsured rate for rural, low-income adults is 47 percent.